The PreHistory of The Far Side: A 10th Anniversary Exhibit


Gary Larson - 1989
    A Far Side retrospective, celebrating its tenth anniversary.

The Big Book of Hell


Matt Groening - 1990
    Read the whole story of "Life in Hell "RM" ," from early prehistory to late last night.

A Zits Guide to Living With Your Teenager


Jerry Scott - 2010
    Parents themselves, Borgman and Scott have learned a thing or two along the way in their creative and family lives. The result is A Zits Guide to Living with Your Teenager.A combination of select Zits comic strips depicting the relationship between teenager Jeremy Duncan and his parents, Walt and Connie, and witty, knowing, and dead-on commentary from Borgman and Scott, A Zits Guide to Living with Your Teenager is an indispensable and entertaining manual for parents on the verge of having a teenager.Zits has twice been honored with the award for Best Newspaper Comic Strip by the National Cartoonists Society and received the "Max and Moritz" award for Best International Comic Strip in 2000.

Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell


Illiad - 2000
    'Illiad' Frazer. " Some say it's a cartoon about Open Source; some say it's about the rift between technical and nontechnical staff; others say its about the pain that technical people suffer when dealing with the stubbornly unintelligent; some even say that User Friendly is a cartoon about Internet Workers. User Friendly addresses all those issues, but I don't think that's what it's about, strictly speaking. User Friendly's universe revolves around the simple idea that technology brings out both the best and the worst in people, no matter who they are."User Friendly reads like Dilbert for the Open Source community. With a massive online following, it provides outsiders a light-hearted look at the world of the hard core geek, and allows those who make their living dwelling in this world a chance to laugh at themselves.

The Cardboard Valise


Ben Katchor - 2011
    Liv­ing in the same tenement as Emile are Boreal Rince, the exiled king of Outer Canthus, and Elijah Salamis, a supranationalist determined to erase the cultural and geographic boundaries that separate the citizens of the Earth. Although they rarely meet, their lives in­tertwine through the elaborate fictions they construct and inhabit: a vast panorama of humane hamburger stands, exquisitely ethereal ethnic restaurants, ancient restroom ruins, and wild tracts of land that fit neatly next to high-rise hotels. The Cardboard Valise is a graphic novel as travelogue; a canvas of semi-surrealism; and a poetic, whimsical, beguiling work of Ben Katchor’s dazzling imagination.

Everyday MUTTS: A Comic Strip Treasury


Patrick McDonnell - 2006
    Long may he reign."Everyday MUTTS marks the 11th book of the award-winning MUTTS strip. It is the follow-up to Patrick McDonnell's successful collection Who Let the Cat Out? as well as his first storybook, The Gift of Nothing, which reached the New York Times Best-Seller List for Children's Picture Books in January 2006. McDonnell's classic cartooning style not only delivers consistent laughs but often a message that reminds us to take care of our furry friends. With its expressive art and clever, often philosophical pet banter, MUTTS has built a large and loyal fan base among readers and cartoonists alike. McDonnell is a past winner of the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award, and MUTTS won the coveted Comic Strip of the Year Award in 1996. This unique collection includes 16 pages of full-color bonus material, including watercolors, other artwork, and items personally selected from the creator's sketchbook to accompany the black-and-white dailies and McDonnell's Sunday pages with his signature title panels. As always, the tales-and tails-of this especially close dog-kitty friendship can be counted on for charming adventures and gentle laughs, reminding us that there is more than it seems to the Everyday MUTTS we meet on the street.

The Complete Dick Tracy Volume 1: 1931-1933


Chester Gould - 2006
    The first volume of this multi-year project will include the five sample strips that Gould used to sell his groundbreaking strip, as well as nearly 500 comic strips encompassing the series' beginning, from October 1931-May 1933. Among these strips are the first appearance of many long-time Dick Tracy characters, such as Tess Truehart, Junior and Chief Brandon. This special first volume features an overview and introduction from Consulting Editor and writer Max Allan Collins, as well as a never-before-published interview between Collins and creator Chester Gould. Each volume will feature book design from award-winning designer/artist Ashley Wood. -The Library of American Comics is the world's #1 publisher of classic newspaper comic strips, with 14 Eisner Award nominations and three wins for best book. LOAC has become "the gold standard for archival comic strip reprints... The research and articles provide insight and context, and most importantly the glorious reproduction of the material has preserved these strips for those who knew them and offers a new gateway to adventure for those discovering them for the first time." - Scoop

The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker


Robert Mankoff - 2004
    Organized by decade, with commentary by some of the magazine's finest writers, this landmark collection showcases the work of the hundreds of talented artists who have contributed cartoons over the course ofThe New Yorker's eight-two-year history. From the early cartoons of Peter Arno, George Price and Charles Addams to the cutting-edge work of Alex Gregory, Matthew Diffee and Bruce Eric Kaplan (with stops along the way for the genius of Charles Barsotti, Roz Chast, Jack Ziegler, George Booth, and many others), the art collected here forms, as David Remnick puts it in his Foreword, "the longest-running popular comic genre in American life." Throughout the book, brief overviews of each era's predominant themes—from the Depression and nudity to technology and the Internet, highlight various genres of cartoons and shed light on our pastimes and preoccupations. Brief profiles and mini-portfolios spotlight the work of key cartoonists, including Arno, Chast, Ziegler, and others. The DVD-ROM included with the book is what really makes the "Complete Cartoons" complete. Compatible with most home computers and easily browsable, the disk contains a mind-boggling 70,363 cartoons, indexed in a variety of ways. Perhaps you'd like to find all the cartoons by your favorite artist. Or maybe you'd like to look up the cartoons that ran the week you were born, or all of the cartoons on a particular subject. Of course, you can always begin at the beginning, February 21, 1925, and experience the unprecedented pleasure of reading through every single cartoon ever published in The New Yorker. Enjoy this one-of-a-kind protrait of American life over the past eight decades, as captured by the talented pens and singular outlooks of the masters of the cartoonist's art.

Krazy and Ignatz, 1927-1928: Love Letters in Ancient Brick


George Herriman - 2002
    Each volume is edited by the San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum's Bill Blackbeard, the world's foremost authority on early 20th Century American comic strips, and designed by Jimmy Corrigan author Chris Ware. In addition to the 104 full-page black-and-white Sunday strips from 1927 and 1928 (Herriman did not use color until 1935), the book includes introductions by Blackbeard, vaudeville historian Ben Schwartz and reproductions of rare Herriman ephemera from Ware's own extensive collection, as well as annotations and other notes by Ware and Blackbeard. Krazy Kat is a love story, focusing on the relationships of its three main characters. Krazy Kat adored Ignatz Mouse. Ignatz Mouse just tolerated Krazy Kat, except for recurrent onsets of targeting tumescence, which found expression in the fast delivery of bricks to Krazy's cranium. Offisa Pup loved Krazy and sought to protect "her" (Herriman always maintained that Krazy was genderless) by throwing Ignatz in jail. Each of the characters was ignorant of the others' true motivations, and this simple structure allowed Herriman to build entire worlds of meaning into the actions, building thematic depth and sweeping his readers up by the looping verbal rhythms of Krazy Co.'s unique dialogue.

You're All Just Jealous of My Jetpack


Tom Gauld - 2013
    Sikoryak, Michael Kupperman, and Kate Beaton.”—NPR, Best Books of 2013A new collection from the Guardian and New York Times Magazine cartoonistThe New York Times Magazine cartoonist Tom Gauld follows up his widely praised graphic novel Goliath with You’re All Just Jealous of My Jetpack, a collection of cartoons made for The Guardian. Over the past eight years, Gauld has produced a weekly cartoon for the Saturday Review section of Britain’s best-regarded newspaper. Only a handful of comics from this huge and hilarious body of work have ever been printed in North America—and these have been available exclusively within the pages of the prestigious Believer magazine.      You’re All Just Jealous of My Jetpack distills perfectly Gauld’s dark humor, impeccable timing, and distinctive style. Arrests by the fiction police and imaginary towns designed by Tom Waits intermingle hilariously with piercing observations about human behavior and whimsical imaginings of the future. Again and again, Gauld reaffirms his position as a first-rank cartoonist, creating work infused with a deep understanding of both literary and cartoon history.

Underworld, Vol. 1: Cruel and Unusual Comics


Kaz - 1997
    The lead character in most is Bitchy Bitch, the perma-nently PMS'd and PO'd embodiment of the female id, who also stars in her own series of cartoon shorts on the Oxygen Network's X-Chromosome animated series.The raunchiest collection, focusing on Bitchy's sexual excapades.

Explainers: The Complete Village Voice Strips, 1956-1966


Jules Feiffer - 1960
    It was originally titled Sick Sick Sick, but Feiffer changed the name to, simply, Feiffer, because he got tired of explaining that the title referred to the society he was commenting on, not the nature of his humor, which, he insisted, was not sick.Politically, the '50s was dominated by the insipid Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower; the backwash of Joe McCarthy; and the Cold War, which was in full swing. Culturally, the Beats were revolutionizing literature, Marlon Brando was changing the face of acting, and Elvis Presley was altering the public's perception of pop music. The post-war suburban bliss of the country was being challenged by sociologists and economists in books like The Lonely Crowd, The Other America, and The Afflulent Society. The civil rights movement was gaining momentum. Camelot was just around the corner, and would be shattered by the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK. The Vietnam War would polarize the country. It was into this scrambled political-cultural climate that Jules Feiffer flung himself full throttle for the next ten years.His strip tackled just about every issue, private and public, that affected the sentient American: relationships, sexuality, love, family, parents, children, psychoanalysis, neuroses, presidents, politicians, media, race, class, labor, religion, foreign policy, war, and one or two other existential questions. It was the first time that the American public had been subjected to a weekly dose of comics that so uncompromisingly and wittily confronted individuals' private fears and society's public transgressions. Explainers is the first of four volumes collecting Feiffer's entire run of weekly strips from The Village Voice. This edition contains approximately 500 strips originally published between 1956 and 1966 in a brick-like landscape hardcover format.

Cerebus


Dave Sim - 1987
    This initial volume collects the first two years of stories from Dave Sim's 300-issue magnum opus. Don't be discouraged by the initially crude artwork or the silliness of the stories. It gets better--even noticeably within this volume. This first installment is the most valuable in preparing for the larger stories ahead.When we first meet Cerebus--a small, gray, and chronically ill-tempered aardvark--he is making his living as a barbarian. In 1977, when the Cerebus comic book series began, Sim initially conceived of it as a parody of such popular series as Conan, Red Sonja, and Elric but quickly mined that material and transformed the scope of the series into much more. Even by the end of this volume, the Cerebus story begins to transform beyond "funny animal" humor into something much more complex and interesting. High points in Cerebus include the introduction of Lord Julius, the dictator of Palnu, who looks, acts, and talks just like a certain cigar-smoking, mustachioed comedian; Jaka, Cerebus's one true love; Elrod the Albino, an innept swordsman; and the Cockroach, the-mother-of-all-superhero-parodies and "inspiration" for the much-later TV and comic character--the Tick. All of these characters appear later on in the series as part of a constantly present ensemble of supporting figures.Even if Cerebus doesn't knock your socks off, give its successor, High Society a try, as this is where the plot really gets going.

The Greatest of Marlys


Lynda Barry - 2000
    This book answers the call as it delivers the life and times of Marlys Mullen, the most beloved character in Barry's nationally syndicated comic strip, "Ernie Pook's Comeek." This is a Lynda Barry double-tall: the long-awaited collection of the best strips from her syndicated comics. Way back in the mid-1980s, comic illustrator and writer Lynda Barry introduced the character of Marlys Mullen, her crazy groovy teenage sister Maybonne, her sensitive and strange little brother Freddie, a mother like no other, and an array of cousins and friends from the 'hood. This oversized book presents the long strange journey through puberty and life that Marlys and company have experienced. Marlys's universe and galaxy are funny, rude, disturbing, tearful . . . in short, very, very Lynda Barry.

PvP, Volume 1: PvP at Large


Scott R. Kurtz - 2004
    Landscape format trade paperback.